> "You could run a serviceable Linux console on 4MB RAM back then. X11 was also doable [..]" This was my setup for a considerable amount of time. Even though i

> "You could run a serviceable Linux console on 4MB RAM back then. X11 was also doable [..]" This was my setup for a considerable amount of time. Even though it is hard to believe in our fast paced times it must have been for several years. The 386DX with 4 MiB was my first Linux machine and my first PC for that matter. 4 MiB was not enough to even run the Slackware installer, so you had to partition and mkswap manually from the command line before you could run it. Apart from that it was a pretty workable machine for those days standards. I used it from the console most of the time, but X11 worked, even if it was slow as molasses, as you said. I remember running GNU chess. While you could play from the command line it was one of the apps where the GUI was really helpful. Good times!